When Cait Reilly refused to work for free at Poundland, the tabloids had a field day. How lazy and idealist are the youth of today! Fancy being on the dole and turning down work! Wasn’t like she had anything better to do, she just couldn’t be arsed… Dossing about, expecting handouts from the state and giving nothing in return, good god, in my day we would have had her belted. Worse than the damn foreigners these young people.

Etc. Etc., you know the script.

Cait’s refusal was not out of a snobbery for Poundland, the retail sector, or those who work in retail. It was out of disdain for a system that thinks young people’s labour is worth less than other people’s, and which has now deemed it worthless. The government’s compulsory ‘work experience’ schemes, in which young people on unemployment benefit are ordered to give their labour to large corporations for free, are becoming the status-quo and have massive swathes of public support behind them. The more well-meaning of these misguided supporters think the government are doing us a favour, making us more employable. These tend to be the same people who believe that if you want a job, you will get one, and if you don;t have one, it must be due to laziness and unwillingness to work. Today’s news tells us that of the 231,000 people currently unemployed in Scotland, over 88,000 are aged 18 to 24. So 38% of Scots on the dole are youth (and these figures don’t even take the 16-17 group into consideration).

It is simply untrue that young people do not want to work. In Scotland, many young people have part-time jobs while still in high school, and rely on part-time work to see them through university. Tuition fees might remain free for Scots studying in their home countries, but rent and food are not. The student who does nothing but party is an archaic stereotype, and a myth. The student who must fit in classes around part time jobs – in many cases students have more than one of these – is an increasing commonality, especially in the case of lower-paid working-class families who simply cannot afford to support their children while they are away at university. Graduates who are unable to find jobs in their sector due to ‘lack of experience’ or a simple lack of jobs are being turned away from lower-paid jobs on the grounds that they are ‘over-qualified’, creating a widing graduate employment gulf. And young people who do not go to university, preferring to leave education in order to make a wage sooner, are increasingly finding that there are no jobs for them. Where even minimum-wage jobs demand extensive ‘experience’, school-leavers increasingly find themselves at a loose end in a system that refuses to accomodate them. Clearly the factors leading to youth unemployment are much more multifarious than unwillingness to work or idealist attitudes.

So is this huge number, this 38% of Scotland’s unemployed being youth, a crazy coincidence? Or is it symptomatic of a system that consistently works against the interests of young people?

Either way, free labour presents no solution, and it works against everyone’s interests, not just those of the youth. Why would a company employ someone to do labour for them when they could have a young person do it for free? The Tories are notorious for acting in the interests of big business and ‘the city’ rather in the interests of the people, and no more so than here. In a Britain where young people’s labour is worthless, unemployment increases for every age category, since the workforce is increasingly made up of unpaid people on unemployment benefit. This scheme does not make young people more employable, it makes them work for dole – and even if we are to see unemployment benefit as a substitute for the wages they would otherwise earn from this labour (which it categorically isn’t, but humour me for a second) – we are still expecting young people to work for a fraction of the minimum wage – a fraction of what an employee would be paid to do the same job. And this fraction of the minimum wage is paid for by the taxpayer, rather than by the company that gets the benefit of this virtually free labour.

As usual, we can find some guidance here in Marx. The theory of surplus value tells us that profit is created from workers being paid the lowest possible wage for their labour – necessarily this must be less than the products of their labour are worth to a buyer. The lower the wage, the higher the profit margin. Free labour – or, at best, dole-priced labour – results in a widespread acceptance of the assumption that labour isn’t worth wages, thus devaluing everyone’s labour. People are paid less as a result, thus company profiits go up, and the unemployment statistics are worse than ever due to unemployed people being used as virtual slaves. This is a super-capitalist plot devised to increase company profit using the poorest members of our society, relying on the prejudice many have for young people in order to quell any resistance to a scheme that devalues everyone’s labour, and makes the unemployment problem worse. Classic Tory strategy, whereby the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Cait Reilly simply refused to be a dole slave. The system demands she works. She demands it gives her a job. She demands her labour – and by extension everyone’s – be worth at least minimum wage.

When international charities illustrate the immensity of poverty and deprivation in areas of the ‘Third World’, they often use a statistic of how many children die per minute from preventable diseases due to a lack of cleaning drinking water and sanitation. A common response to the brutal realities of capitalist production, distribution and consumption on a global scale is to externally lament the plight of far-off peoples while internally feeling glad that we live safe and secure in the developed world, the land of the ‘have’s’ and not the ‘have not’s.’

Yet, poverty and deprivation also affect our own societies profoundly. A fifth of the UK population lives in poverty , while around 4 million children live in low-income households.

Many vulnerable people, particularly the elderly, are choosing between heating and eating this winter

With Christmas approaching and one of the coldest winters in living memory gripping the country, one of the clearest examples of how deeply poverty affects our society and how brutal its effects are is this: every nine minutes last winter a pensioner died of a cold-related illness. In fact, last winter there were 25,400 cold-related deaths (i.e. deaths occuring in the winter months due to cold that are above average levels of deaths during the rest of the year) in England and Wales, which is relatively far higher than other countries with colder climates than ours.

What is disgraceful is that just as with a lack of clean drinking water in Africa, cold-related winter deaths are prevantable. They happen in the home where with adequate heating people can protect themselves from the health consequences of dangerously low temperatures. The elderly are particularly vulnerable: of the 25,400 deaths last winter mentioned above, 20,600 (81%) were people aged 75 and over. The central cause is fuel poverty: when households spend over 10% of their income just to keep warm, and extreme fuel poverty, where over 20% is spent. In Scotland, a third of Scots live in fuel poverty: 770,000 households, and the figure has been rising steadily over the previous decade: it was under 300,000 in 2002. This Christmas, vulnerable groups of the population are choosing to forego food in order to afford their heating, and many families are choosing to live in only one room of the house in order to afford their heating and keep warm. As a spokesperson of Citizens Advice Scotland recent reported in the Herald:

“One-third of Scots are now officially living in fuel poverty and that is completely unacceptable.

“Advisers across Scotland have reported to us that many people are so worried about their fuel bills that they are going without food in order to keep the heating on.

“Others are planning to spend the Christmas holiday period living more or less in one room, so they don’t have to pay to heat the whole house.

“We’re hearing of too many vulnerable people – including pensioners, sick people and families with young children – who are sitting shivering in their homes this Christmas. Many of them are suffering adverse health problems as a result.”

Four of the biggest six energy suppliers, who provide around 97% of British domestic energy, have increased their prices this winter, prompting criticism from Consumer Focus and Ofgem.

And that is the culprit driving up fuel poverty and inflicting such suffering and even death upon the most vulnerable people in our society: capitalism. Energy companies have been increasing the cost of heating, far above increases in the wholesale price of fuel, in order to make increasing profits from selling us the gas and electricity we need to keep warm. In fact, prices have increased by almost 20% between July 2008 and July 2009. When wholesale prices (the prices at which energy companies buy fuel) rise, energy companies invariably pass this onto consumers, and thus still maintain and increase their profits. When wholesale prices fall however, bills stay the same or even continue to rise, so the energy companies still make massive profits. This the logic of the profit motive, and how it utterly conflicts with human need: as winter hits and the need for heating increases (most of all from the vulnerable) energy companies increase bills to profit from the human need to stay alive through keeping warm. The result is increased profits for the companies, and increased fuel poverty, deprivation, missed meals, and winter deaths for the vulnerable.

This is where calls from socialists for a system which values “people not profit” and “human need and environmental protection, not private profit and ecological destruction” show themsevles not to be just slogans, but real demands which draw attention to the contridictions of capitalism. In the example of fuel poverty, there are two ways of dealing with the problem. One is to put a ‘human face’ on capitalism: increasing winter fuel payments to the vulnerable, one-off  ‘windfall’ taxation of company profits and using the money to subsidise heating bills and improve home efficiency. However, while massaging the logic of capital in this fashion may help to alleviate the worst effects of the problem, but it will not eradicate or solve it. This is because the privately-owned energy companies exist to make profit: without this they cannot exist. As soon as these are threatened, political moves will always be made to scrap those measures which hinder the ability to make maximum profit, including protecting the vulnerable from the negative effects of the profit logic. In many ways, this is the story of what has happened to the welfare state. Rather, in today’s political climate the impulse is for the opposite, where winter fuel support may be further reduced. In any case, such a solution is like a temporary patch on a permanent leak: it never fully deals with the problem and it always in conflict with the overall logic of the situation.

The other solution is to remove the profit motive and to run the system on the motive of serving human need instead. Such a system requires the means of energy extraction and distribution to be publicly owned, i.e. owned by and run for the whole of society, not in order to make a profit for stockholders. The result is that rather than being seen as a commodity to make a profit, energy is seen as a resource by which we are able to heat ourselves in order to stay alive, protect the vulnerable from the negative health effects of winter cold, and allow us to get on with our lives without having to choose between heating and eating. Such an energy system could operate in several ways which would have to be debated, including maximum billing (e.g. no more than 2.5% of any households income) with the rest of the cost met through taxation, to high billing of the super-rich and corporations for energy with the money used to reduce bills of the poorest, to a combination of taxation and subsidies to remove bills from either the most vulnerable or everyone altogether.

Of course, the details of such a move would need to be debated democratically and on a mass basis. The point is: this winter, both poor families in Africa, and in Scotland, indeed all over the world, will be suffering from the logic of capitalism: private profit coming before human need. In our society, fuel poverty is but one example of the structural violence capitalism inflicts upon us all. For me, the only answer for humanity is to develop an alternative that puts human need and the logic of human development at the heart of society. That is why we must debate, develop, and struggle for a socialism fit to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

For an excellent and personal article on fuel poverty in Scotland, read Aiden Kerr’s previous post on the blog here.

Allo Presidente!!

It’s no secret that me, Lydia, loves Hugo Chavez. Although, it seems that there is massively split opinions of Chavez on the left in Scotland.

However, Chavez just keeps doing cool shit that no one can deny is totally fucking awesome.  In Venezuela right now, horrible flooding has claimed the lives of over a dozen citizens and has forced over 30,000 Venezuelans to flee.

Chavez has been markedly criticised for failing to produce housing for the people of Venezuela, but Chavez’s rebuttal blames his predecessors’ profit-oriented manner of producing housing has made that difficult for him. So disenchanted, the people living on the hillside of Antimano (Werstern Caracas) refused to relocate. They demanded that Chavez come to them. So he did.

Chavez went to the flood-ravaged hill and said something. (Try to imagine one of the things David Cameron is LEAST LIKELY to say to homeless folk in Scotland’s City Centres?)

Chavez opened his palace up to those who had lost their homes to the flood. Not just for today, not just for a week, for the whole year.

“I have a proposal for you families: stay here for a year,”

The Palace

Now forgive me, but I think that is fucking sweet. Chavez decides to have an office in his palace converted into small apartments for the families and situated them near his presidential kitchen, where there is enough food and cooking supplies for over 20 families. As if that wasn’t cool enough, Chavez also offered space within Venezuela’s military hub, Tiuna Fort, meaning that he would have to temporarily vacate several buildings of their military officers to make space for the homeless.

Now, you’d think that charity could not be criticised. A columnist in newspaper Tal Cual had this to say about public acts of charity:

“ it can also be demagogic, exhibitionist and when taken to its extreme, truly grotesque and tacky.”

I think that people who attack Chevez forget something. Chavez does not have a hell of a lot to work with. People in this country pooh-pooh his extensions of great personal kindness to the people of his country as simple media-service. I don’t believe that it is true. Chavez is trying to build socialism in a country where there is fuck-all. The whole country was simply a massive capitalist regime, hence the astronomical inflation in the last decades. Chavez is prevented from giving the people free housing  because of the powerful industry of real-estate which is sitting on so much money. Chavez cannot wave a magic wand and declare “Socialism”. His government must work democratically, casting votes to make decisions, and unfortunately quite a lot of Venezuela will not want free housing as they are brainwashed (As most of our own country is!) by the illusion of success that Capitalism  propagates so well. This in turn means that Chavez cannot make the changes he wants to make and then his people become disillusioned. This is a vicious cycle. Chavez must turn to personal deeds which do not require any kind of vote or consensus. Chavez must offer his people the hand of a civilian to a civilian to show his great kindness. This is why he publically allows people to come live in his palace and famously last year had a Christmas event where he bought lots of toys and sold them for knock-down prices. Chavez wants Venezuela to get better, but he cannot do it without support. His opposition brutally tears apart everything he does, calling him false and accusing him of selfishness.

Sure, he has his own TV show. But he sings fucking songs on it and plays guitar and answers questions. I’m sorry, but that’s fucking cool. If it’s a first foot in for the reconstruction of Venezuela, then so be it.  Chavez is not a dictator. Chavez is a man who is trying his best for a country with little hope and he is working to build a better world with only two bricks. There are folk who make out like Chavez took over by force, which he did do ONCE, but failed and stood in elections – and won! Venezuela trust Chavez with their country. They trust his ideology and they love him as a figure. Acts like giving up your own palace space will make people love you, and Chavez does need that, what with the recent decline of his vote percentage in the previous elections. Chavez needs more people to trust him before he can start to rebuild a country where so many are so devoid of hope or trust for their leaders. When Chavez has the trust of the people he can truly start to make changes.

Also, he has a little bird with the same hat as him. OH MY GOD.

The vigilantes took photos as they wrestled the thieves to the ground.

On Thursday, a group of five people attempted to make off with a load of watches from a posh London jewellery shop after smashing the window with a sledgehammer. They were foiled not by police, or shop security – but by a mob of more than 50 passers by and shoppers who jumped in and booted fuck out of the would-be thieves.

WHAT. THE. FUCK? What would make so many ordinary people risk the wrath of a sledgehammer to protect a load of watches and jewellery they could never afford, and that belong to a company that’s never done a thing for them?

Society has put a lot of effort into the vilification of the shoplifter and the thief – the government and the media have worked hard to make ordinary people think of theft as a crime on the same level as rape or murder, which it simply isn’t.

Who would have suffered if the sledgehammer gang hadn’t been thwarted? The shop would have had insurance to cover the cost of the products and the broken window.

Defending the property of private companies against people who want access to that property, or the power or opportunities that come with it, is nothing more than a defense of capitalism and inequality.

One new attempt to pit impoverished people against each other, and widen the gulf between so-called good and bad citizens, is a new scheme called Internet Eyes. Ordinary people can volunteer to sit at home monitoring CCTV cameras in shops, and notify the owners if they spot a shoplifter.  Their website says:

The sole purpose of Internet Eyes is to enable responsible members of the public to use the latest technology to help shopkeepers and the police combat the serious social harm that shoplifting causes.

The site is aimed at businesses that are too cheap to pay anyone to watch their cameras. Firms pay £20 a week for the service – much cheaper than actually employing a member of staff, and paying the tax, National Insurance and other costs associated with that. The volunteers, each watching up to four screens at a time, have the opportunity to receive a reward of up to £1,000 a month – if they manage to catch anyone.

Volunteers first have to pay a membership fee (£12.99 a year, £4.99 a quarter, or £1.99 a month). You are then rewarded for the hours you put in – if you watch the monitors more than 30 hours per month, you will receive a generous shiny 50 pence piece. More than 45 hours per month gets ￡1, and more than 60 hours per month gets￡1.50. Each volunteer receives feedback points from shop owners according to how much they spot. The volunteer with the most points at the end of each month will receive  £1000. If two or more volunteers have the same number of points, the money will be split between them.

So, if you’re poor and can’t find a job, you’ve now got a choice: go out and steal what you need to get by, or sit at home on the internet hoping to catch someone else stealing and get rewarded for dobbing them in.

And what happens when shoplifters do get caught? As we’ve previously reported, shoplifters in the UK are more likely to be jailed than sex offenders.

And in the US, vigilantism against shoplifters is just as strong. Last week, when a costume shop owner in Virginia caught a teenager trying to pinch something, instead of calling the police, he forced the boy to stand outside his shop for the rest of the day, in a Sesame Street costume holding a sign admitting to his crime.

After threats of terrorism and boycott, the Commonwealth games have formally opened in Dehli tonight, as millions of viewers worldwide crowd round their tellies to watch the diddy olympics begin. There may be more Scots -- particularly Glaswegians -- watching the games than usual, as Glasgow is the next city due to host the games in 2014.

While Glasgow’s unlikely to have all the same problems Dehli has had with the Games, it’s worthwhile for Socialists to look at what’s happened with the Commonwealth Games in India. This years Commonwealth Games have had a bit more controversy than usual, and some of the criticisms of the Games in Dehli are applicable in Glasgow too.

Most of the controversy surrounding the games has been due to the possibility of terror attacks on athletes or spectators at the events, with some sportsmen calling for a boycott of the event on security grounds. There have been other calls for a boycott however, for very different reasons that haven’t been as widely reported in the media -- probably because they are less “glamorous” than terror threats.

Organisations of India’s poor and working class have formed a coalition called the “Anti Commonwealth Games Front”, opposing the way the devastating effect the games have had on thousands of India’s poorest citizens, which are outlined below,

1. In the run-up to the Commonwealth Games, the city has seen the most blatant violation of human rights of the urban poor.

• Around 200,000 – 250,000 people have been rendered homeless and had their homes demolished due to the Games.

• Destitute persons (‘beggars’) have been rounded up from the streets. Additional police force has been sought to “catch them all.” Many ‘beggars’ have been sent back to their home states after serving prison sentences. They are being hidden away in parks because the Delhi government does not want foreigners to see Delhi’s poor. The Bombay Prevention of Begging Act 1959 has been used to arbitrarily arrest and detain the homeless.

• Migrant workers have been threatened and terrorised to leave the city. Domestic workers, drivers, plumbers and other workers are being packed off to railway stations in an attempt to ‘clean-up’ the city.

• 300,000 street vendors have already lost their livelihoods to the Games. Cart-pullers, waste-pickers, head-loaders, balloon sellers, cobblers, street-food vendors and other informal sector workers are being denied their right to work and livelihood. Since they are not able to earn their daily wage, they are starving as they have no money to buy food. All dhabas (eateries) on the Games routes have been closed for security reasons. Weekly markets in the vicinity of stadiums have been banned for the duration of the Games.

• Workers at the Commonwealth Games construction sites have seen some of the most widespread violation of human rights. The relentless toil of starving labourers has created the new infrastructure in Delhi. But workers have been forced to work day and night, and yet minimum wages and overtime wages have not been paid to them. Some labourers have lost their lives due to the hazardous working conditions. Child labour has also been involved in some Games projects.

• Women and young girls have been trafficked from other states into Delhi for sex work during the Commonwealth Games.

2. The government has completely lost its sense of priorities. While Rs. 70,000 to 100,000 crore (US$ 15 – 21 billion) are being spent on hosting a twelve day sporting extravaganza,

• The budgetary allocation for Indira Awas Yojna (2010-11) is a mere Rs. 10,000 crore [1 crore = 10 million]; for Rajiv Gandhi Awas Yojana (2010-2011) it is only Rs. 1,270 crore; and for ICDS (Integrated Child Development Services) it is Rs. 8,700 crore. • The annual budget of Department of Revenue, Government of Delhi for shelters for the homeless has been Rs. 60 lakh for the last 10 years, while crores are being spent on resurfacing and beautification of streets of Delhi. Rs. 24.42 crore are being spent on beautification of Mehrauli Badarpur Road and the per kilometre cost of beautifying Subramania Bharti Marg is Rs. 1.28 crore.

3. India is a poor country and cannot afford this kind of wastage of precious resources.

• 40% of the world’s starvation-affected people live in India.

• More than 320 million people in India are unable to manage three square meals a day.

• More than 5,000 children die every day from malnourishment.

• 5.6 crore children either don’t go to school or drop out due to poverty.

4. The claim that by hosting the Commonwealth Games, India’s performance in sports will improve, is completely false. For many schools across India a playground is a distant dream for the children. Moreover the plight of most Indian athletes is dismal if not pathetic. India has spent at least Rs. 4500 crore on renovating stadiums for the Games. This money could have been more wisely spent to improve facilities for sportspersons across the country.

5. Residents of Delhi have had to put up with a lot of inconveniences to host an event they were not consulted about and did not ask for. The city residents will eventually pay for this sporting event. The Delhi Government has gone bankrupt because of wanton spending in the name of the Games. The city has become much more expensive and taxes have increased.

6. It has been reported that CWG is being counted as one of the biggest corruption scandals in the country. The government instead of providing accountability for the financial irregularities is focusing its attention on the success of the Games under the garb of ‘national pride.’ However twisted the understanding of ‘national pride’ may be, how can Indians support or be enthused about a sporting event that is making a selected few richer?

7. Rs. 744 crore meant for Scheduled Castes in Delhi has been diverted to meet the Games related costs, in complete violation of the Special Component Plan and the 2006 Planning Commission Guidelines.

8. Every decision relating to the Commonwealth Games has been taken in secrecy and in violation of the democratic norms of the country. The permission to bid for the Games was taken under Rule 12 (one line); the decision to hand over the Commonwealth Games Village to Delhi University to be used as a hostel was secretly reversed; the decision to evict students from hostels; the decision to reserve special lanes for CWG participants, was not the result of any democratic procedures.

They’ve protested with calls to “Boycott the poverty games”, and demands for “Schools not Stadiums”. Theres also criticisms of the treatment of workers at the Commonwealth Games sites, with 2 workers still in a coma after a footbridge collapsed.

Alongside these criticisms of the excessive money spent on the games and mass evictions, there have been protests against the CEO of the Games, Mike Hooper.

Effigies of Hooper have been burned by protesters calling him a racist, for attacking Delhi’s “population hazard” after officials refused to shut down roads and use them exclusively for the Games -- causing more disruption for ordinary citizens of Delhi and isolating them even more from the games. Hooper’s also been criticised for the money he’s alleged to be making out of the games -- reported to be up to $600,000.

It’s unlikely Glasgow will see the same levels of strife as Dehli when the Games come here in 2014. But there are similar practices to Delhi being enacted, with one resident of Dalmarnock being threatened with eviction. Margaret Jaconelli, a resident in the cities east end is being threatened with a compulsory purchase order that would seize her house, which she has lived in for 34 years.

You may have heard of compulsory purchase orders before -- they’re what Aberdeenshire Council and Donald Trump would like to use to seize folks houses in Aberdeenshire so that they can build a golf course there.

Mrs Jaconelli has been offered a paltry 30k for her house, which is in sharp contrast to how Glasgow City Council dealt with multimillionaire property developer Mayfair. Mayfair’s property developer Charles Price was able to negotiate with the Council and sell his land for a whopping £20 million quid (with the tab picked up by the taxpayer). This is despite Price buying the land for only £8 million, and the fact that the Council could have used a Compulsory Purchase Order on his land as they have done to Mrs Jaconelli. Glasgow City Council’s eviction has been backed by the First Minister, Alex Salmond leaving Mrs Jaconelli to face the oppositon of both a Labour run city council and a national SNP government.

The facts are that the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and Glasgow are not being carried out in the wishes and for the benefit of the majority of the local population, but in the interests of prestige and “soft power” by different forces. Soft power is when countries or institutions try to garner influence and standing in ways other than outright warfare or sabotage -- for example, space projects, international aid, and in this case, sporting events.

The best example of this in recent times was the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, which China’s leadership used to grandstand their position as a major superpower. Like Delhi, these games went alongside evictions of the poor with little if any compensation. China’s continuing to display soft power by expanding it’s space programme -- despite the abysmal safety records in many Chinese industries.

India wants to use the Commonwealth Games to boost it’s soft power the same way China used the Olympics. India is already growing in influence across Asia, and is one of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) a group of four nations with growing economies that want to expand their own influence regionally and globally, the same way the US and the EU does.

Obviously Glasgow’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games are a bit different to Delhi’s but it’s likely that the virtual one party state that is Glasgow City Council want to use the games to promote their own gentrified, shiny, shopping friendly version of the city -- regardless of the effects it has on folk like Mrs Jaconelli.

The Games itself is also a display of soft power by the UK -- the Commonwealth is a collection of countries almost all of whom were at one point part of the British Empire. Having the Commonwealth allows the UK to maintain soft power over it’s former colonies in international relations, conflict and trade etc.

Very few of the athletes at these games will be concerned about a lot of the international and social issues in Dehli and Glasgow the Games have brought up and caused -- most will be focused on trying to win their own personal battles in their own events. But if sporting events are going to be made accessible and attractive to the majority of people in the world, they need to ditch the practice of putting the prestige of different countries at the expense of their poorest citizens and workers.

The Popular Olympiad, an alternative to the 1936 Olympics hosted in fascist Germany.

Here is an interesting blog folk should check out about the upcoming Glasgow Commonwealth Games

By McMeg

Gettin handouts can be so frustratin
Get in line son there’s five million waitin’
The Proclaimers, Cap in Hand

Dole queue under the Tories.

As a central part of actualising Dave Cameron’s glorious vision of The Big Society, the Con-Dem coalition has promised to sweep away the “cycle of dependency” that afflicts Britain’s “pockets of worklessness”. Announcing his new welfare strategy last week, Iain Duncan Smith decried the fact that a majority of benefit claimants have been claiming for nine of the past ten years, that in many areas some families have not worked in three generations and that 1 in 6 children in the UK are growing up in a household in which no one is working.

And you know what? Sitting in the midst of the largest of these “pockets of worklessness” – a barren tundra called Scotland – I agree with him. It is an absolute disgrace that across our land there are families in which three generations have never worked. It is disgusting not just because of the economic waste, but because of the inevitable social problems that arise from mass unemployment; a community in which there are ‘spongers’ will soon spawn an according number of ‘alchies’ and ‘junkies’. All of this amounts to a tragedy for our nation. But it is a tragedy that the Tories, for all their talk, have absolutely no intention of ending.

This may seem a curious assertion to make given that the Tories have only been in power for a few months. However, the following article will go on to show why the Tories were responsible for creating the very ‘underclass’ that they decry. Furthermore, I will also show how this group of hypocrites ideologically depend on the existence of long-term unemployment and that they are the least likely group of people to get the unemployed back into work. In short, this article will show why the Tories knowingly create the very ‘spongers’ that they spend so much time demonising. Read the rest of this entry »

Former SSY members not happy about their pensions

Pensions might seem an odd topic to write about on the Scottish Socialist Youth blog. It’s surely decades until SSY members’ need to start worrying about retirement, right?

But the fact is, if the UK government have their way, we’ll suffer when we’re older in a way that hasn’t really been seen since the establishment of the welfare state. For local government workers today, they can look forward to living on an average of £4000 a year. But it gets worse than that – when you take out the fact that men still earn more than women, you realise that women get just £2600. That’s just £50 a week!

The situation for people who work for a private business is even worse. The vast majority of private companies have in recent years got rid of any kind of decent pension scheme for their workers. Most don’t provide anything at all. This is because their workers haven’t been able to be organised enough to defend their rights, and company directors have seen pensions as an easy target as they to try to make their businesses more profitable, and themselves more rich. Their workers are forced to survive on the basic pensions provided by the benefits system, barely enough to survive.

Workers in the public sector have been slightly more successful in defending their rights, because they have more powerful unions to represent them. But, as you can see from the figures above, it’s still a poverty ridden old age they have to look forward to, and in fact unions negotiated reductions in pension entitlements under the previous Labour government.

The ConDem government is determined to make those of us who are working today get less when we’re old. To do this, they’ve tried to make people believe that public sector pensions are in crisis, and that the state can’t afford to pay people what they’ve been promised as they work hard keeping schools open, rubbish off the streets or supporting vulnerable people. Workers have paid into pensions with their own money. The government wants them to pay more, receive less for their money, and work longer.

Read the rest of this entry »

New figures have been revealed showing that women will bear the brunt of the ConDem coalition’s budget cuts.

As Tory Minister Bob Neill said a few weeks ago, ‘Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt.’

Shadow Welfare Secretary Yvette Cooper said:

“Women are bearing nearly three-quarters of the Tory-Liberal plans, while men are bearing just a quarter. This is despite the fact that women’s income and wealth is still considerably lower than men’s.
Even more significant, this doesn’t include the impact of public spending cuts. As women make up more of the public sector workforce they will be more heavily hit by the public sector pay freeze and the projected 600,000 net public sector job losses… Women are more affected by the cuts in things like housing benefit, cuts in upratings to the additional pension, public sector pensions or attendance allowances, and they benefit less than men from the increases in the income tax allowances.”

A gender audit of the budget showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers. The analysis looks at a net total of £8bn raised by 2014-15 through direct tax and benefit measures. It includes the effects of raising the personal tax allowance, the increase in capital gains tax, the freezing of benefits and the changes to pensions. Of the income to be raised by the recent budget, men will pay £2.2bn while women will pay £5.8bn.

It is well known in Britain that women are already more affected by poverty than men – government statistics show that almost half of all women have total individual incomes of less than £100 a week, compared with less than a fifth of men.

Instead of millionaire families like the Camerons, the Cleggs, and indeed Cooper and her husband Ed Balls – it’s going to be poor families and single mothers that are going to pay for the crisis in capitalism.

It’s also important to note, though, that this study hasn’t come out of a sudden commitment to women’s rights or fighting poverty by Cooper and the Labour Party, but it is an opportunistic move to make the Tories and Lib Dems look bad, and to trick us all into thinking that things would be better if only we had a Labour government – which, of course, they wouldn’t. Labour were just as committed to making cuts, and ANY cuts will always impact those at the bottom of society first – and that means disproportionately affecting women. If Yvette Cooper really gave a shit about women in poverty, she wouldn’t be in the Labour party.

Today sees the launch of the 2010 football world cup in South Africa. It’s great news for football fans, and we’re playing our part with a world cup raffle (comment if you’d like to get a ticket!) and South Africa night for the final (watch this space for details.)

But great as it might be for us on the other side of the world to get a month of football to watch, the real costs of the tournament for South Africa are getting hidden amongst the excitement.

Over the next month we’re going to be bringing you a series of articles about South Africa, its history and long political struggles for democracy and socialism that are far from over.

Twenty years ago, holding the world cup in South Africa would have been unthinkable. The world at large refused to allow South Africa to participate in most major sporting events because of Apartheid, the state enforced system of extreme racial segregation and oppression.

But with the fall of Apartheid in the early 90s, the world’s media told us South Africa’s problems were solved. There was democracy, and a government elected by the black majority was finally in power.

Since then however, South African governments have turned away from the left wing ideas that inspired many in the struggle against Apartheid, and looked to global capitalism to solve South Africa’s problems.

The result has been that the majority of South Africans continue to live below the poverty lines, with millions of homeless and low rates of access to clean water or electricity. The average male life expectancy is just 49, and there are unemployment rates of 40%.

While so much has been spent on the world cup, the government still does not provide thousands with a proper home

The government has made the world cup an important part of its economic strategy, and has spent $4.1 billion on hosting the event, more than any other country before it. A series of brand new stadia have been built, driving an economic bubble in the construction industry. However, now that the work is done, the real question is, how much will South Africa actually benefit from the world cup?

Read the rest of this entry »

Sir Bob shows his radical credentials

The world has watched in horror as the outrageously corrupt BBC and Channel 4 has attempted to make the ludicrous claim that there are still problems in Africa.

Sensible people everywhere know that Africa is now a paradise thanks to the efforts of their saviour, multi-millionaire Saint Sir Bob Geldof the Wonderful.

Sir Bob has been on the defensive over the last few weeks, after several different investigations attacked his legacy of work against poverty.

First of all, a BBC World Service investigation received information from several former rebel leaders in Ethiopia that a portion of aid money raised by the Band Aid charity in the 80s was in fact diverted by rebels to buy weapons.

Now, Channel 4 is to screen a documentary next week that attacks His Holiness for distracting attention from the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005.

During the 80s, at the time of Band Aid, the Ethiopian national government was at war with a number of rebel forces in the countryside. Leaders of those rebels are now in power in Ethiopia. However, some former rebel leaders have since fallen out with their former comrade and current Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. They told the BBC that the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) tricked aid workers into giving them money, by disguising themselves as merchants, as well as covering sacks of sand with sacks of food when taking aid cash.

Former TPLF leaders claim that they got $100 million this way, which was spent on weapons to overthrow the government. They also claim that they used front groups, such as the Relief Society of Tigray, to get cash. Band Aid’s own records show they gave $11 million to the society.

His Excellency Sir Geldof has been outraged by the claims, and has threatened to sue the BBC, demanding that the reporters who filed the story and their bosses should get the sack.

“Martin Plaut, [the World Service news and current affairs editor] Andrew Whitehead and Peter Horrocks should be fired. There should be an immediate investigation into what went wrong, steps should be taken to rectify the identified faults and the World Service must work very, very hard to re-establish its trust and hard-won reputation as the world broadcaster of excellence.”

It seems that, according, the His Most Generous Wonderous-ness Geldof, Band Aid should be completely above criticism. How

"Why don't people get that I'm fantastic?!"

dare anyone suggest that a major aid effort in a starving country beset by civil war could ever be affected by corruption?! As BBC journalist Rageh Omaar pointed out in the Guardian, the journalists behind this story were in Ethiopia in the 80s, received serious and credible information, and were right to go ahead with it. There should now be a full investigation. The Most Marvellous Geldof’s response? Omaar is “ridiculous.”

Geldof went on to make the laughable claim that:

“Not a single penny went on armaments. Not one. Not a pound; not a penny. Let me be clear on that. And I’ve also spoken to some of the others, including the Red Cross, who say it is absolute rubbish that any of their money could have possibly gone on arms.”

At this point he really does sound desperate. He could have argued that corruption wasn’t on the scale the story claimed. But to claim that “not a single penny” went astray? As this article on Pambazuka points out, every single aid effort to Africa suffers from corruption. In a continent afflicted by poverty, undemocratic governments and the interference of imperialism in their affairs, it’s impossible to have a completely clean and transparent aid process. In fact, much of the way that aid is given by the western capitalist powers makes things worse.

The vehemence of Geldof’s denial has the opposite effect from the one he intended: it leaves you wondering what it is he’s so desperate to hide.

Meanwhile, in a separate programme, More 4 are screening a documentary called Starsuckers next week which will attack Geldof’s role in the G8 protests in 2005.

At the time, a major coalition of charities, campaign groups and churches came together in the Make Poverty History coalition. This demanded debt relief for third world countries and more aid from rich ones. It organised a mass march through the centre of Edinburgh, all dressed in white. At the time the SSP and SSY took part, but instead of white, we dressed in red, to symbolise our desire to Make Capitalism History. We argued that the structure of the international economy was geared to do nothing else but increase inequality and keep poor countries poor. An appeal to the G8 leaders meeting in Scotland was useless, they must be attacked and defeated.

SSP marching against the G8

However, even this charity campaign was too radical for the All Knowing Genius Geldof, who organised Live Aid, a massive celebrity mutual masturbation fest, were stars both young and has-been got together for a concert where they told the world how great they were.

Starsuckers claims that Geldof hijacked the Make Poverty History campaign for his own ends. After the summit, it became clear that G8 leaders were going to do sweet FA to help third world countries, and that all the talk of progress had just been rhetoric for the cameras. But Geldof said he gave the global political elite “10 out of 10″ for commitments on aid, and “8 out of 10″ for debt relief. He later said the 8 score should be upgraded to 10 out of 10. In the process he showed just how much he himself was part of the PR machine defending the corrupt imperialist governments of the west.

The ever furious Geldof has penned a 6,000 word letter attacking Starsuckers and attempting to defend his rapidly-vanishing legacy. The theme underlying all this outrage is that clearly Geldof is pretty sensitive to allegations that show him up for what he is: a completely useless celebrity attention seeker. A man who wanted to do good, but has been completely compromised by working hand-in-glove with the powerful forces actually responsible for third world poverty.

He attacked anti-poverty campaigners as “wankers dressed as clowns”, and said Make Poverty History was “a bit lame and almost entirely ineffectual. . .boring, futile and adolescent.” Again, he says he’s contacted his lawyers.

On the other hand, according to his letter, Live Aid had an acute political vision of the world economic situation and the realistic prospect of ending under-development throughout the global south. Just listen to this piece of stunning analysis from Geldof:

“Richard [Curtis] and Bono came to me and said do another gig. I said you fucking do it if you’re so eager. Bono said he’d play with McCartney and they’d open the gig with “It was 20 years ago today” – a reference to Live Aid. I wanted to see that. Precisely that rock n roll moment I wanted to see, so I said ok. That’s why I did it. Pathetic but y’know …”

Yes Bob, we do know.

The fact of the matter is, the protests against the G8 weren’t as successful as some of the previous mobilisations against international capitalist summits, like the Battle of Seattle. A lot of this was to do with the political confusion-were we against the summit, or asking the leaders to do something for us? Despite the best efforts of the SSP and others, Make Poverty History’s campaign contributed a lot towards stopping a more radical, anti-capitalist approach.

But Geldof knows exactly what side of the power divide he comes down on. In his letter he writes:

“Like it or not the agents of change in our world are the politicians. Otherwise you’re always outside the tent pissing in. They stay inside their tent pissing back out at you. This is futile. My solution is to get inside the tent and piss in there.”

"When we get inside the tent can we piss on each other again?"

Whilst Geldof and the G8 leaders engage in bizarre watersports, those of us who actually know what they’re talking about can unpick what he’s said here. The only way to get any change is to rely on the same global elite who are responsible for creating the situation as it stands, claims Geldof. But rich countries are rich precisely because they have looted Africa and the rest of the third world for centuries now, and it’s still going on. Those people and movements who’ve tried to stand up to this have faced ferocious attacks from the west and their corrupt allies. The G8 leaders will NEVER solve poverty in Africa, because they are responsible for it.

The way forward for poor countries is demonstrated by the handful of examples where the people have won and the government stands up to the rich world. Today, Venezuela and Cuba, which have revolutionary governments supported by the mass of the people, are able to provide world class health and education to their people, and do not suffer from famine as countries like Ethiopia do. The people of these countries, and their allies here, are the real agents of change, not rich politicians.

As for us in Scotland, it’s clear that sitting around watching wanker celebrities on telly is going to change nothing. We have a responsibility to help people in the third world. The best way we can do that is by fighting for socialism here, and trying to take down our own corrupt governments responsible for so much suffering across the globe.